Death's awakening
by Nia
Summary: An alternative ending to Macbeth that got a little too weird for a school project


The rat, its small black eyes bright against its matted brown fur, poked its nose out of the small chamber it was hiding in. Seeing no one around, it skittered across the chamber's roof. Its paws clacked on ivory bone and then sunk into the soft padding of rotted flesh as it scurried out of the eye hole and across the half eaten expanse of the skull. Finding a satisfactory spot, the plump rodent stopped, and sunk its teeth into the nourishing gray flesh readily available for consumption. Ignore the rank smell and plentiful rot, it gnawed happily at the decayed corpse. Suddenly, the rat itself joined its meal in death as a heavy new body, thrown on top of the rat's meal, and squashed its tiny life away. The new addition to the pile of rotting bodies was recently deceased, its skin not yet marred by the cold stiffness of death. One of the living stood a short distance away from the gruesome pile of soulless flesh. The man, once a well know doctor, stared at the proof of his failure. It had just been a childhood disease that had killed so many of the once proud castle's inhabitants. A childhood disease that apparently so many of the nobility, having never been exposed to bad food or water, had never developed immunity towards in childhood. They had all died, while he, with the other members of the servant class, had watched. The noble fighters found themselves defeated by an honor less foe on who even the sharpest sword wouldn't leave a scratch. The doctor sighed, rubbing eyes that had been denied the pleasure of sleep for too long, dull orbs that reflected the scene before him. He turned and walked towards the chamber of his last surviving patient. The creaking of the floor harmonized with the creaking hinges to sing the chamber's inhabitant's funeral hymn of the near future. The doctor entered the room, pausing momentarily at the threshold, taken aback by the heavy sickroom air he had never been able to become accustomed to. His wondering eyes came to rest on the gaunt figure resting on the bed in the center of the ominous chamber. The gray, moist walls of the room matched the pallor of the figures skin, and patient's frail frame seemed barely able to support the harsh weight of the pile of blankets nearly covering him. The doctor approached the bed; the tapping of his boots joining the sound of the figure's rasping breaths in filling the burdensome silence with heavy rhythms. The scrawny neck, blue veins evident beneath translucent grey flesh, turned towards the approaching doctor. "Doctor." came the croaking gasp, a glorious instrument rusted away to a mere shadow of its former beauty, justly reflecting the decrepit state of its owner. The figure struggled to sit up, and with a gasp fell back again. "My lord," the doctor replied with a weary bow of his head. He could feel Death's dark presence near, a seductive promise of welcoming night and eternal rest. Yearning for the gray release from a world of too sharp colors and reality, his mind reached longingly for the visitor's gentle path, all the while knowing that he was only the spectator to the embarkment of so many into the gentle dusk. He knew his time had not yet arrived; his day was still bright, the last colors of sunset barely beginning to streak the bright sky. A sudden cough brought the medical man back to the not yet departed patient prone before him. "Please," came the grinding voice from beneath the mountainous pile of cloth. A hand, the bones just barely covered by skin's thin blanket, reached for the nearby table. On it sat a monstrous gold crown, just barely out of reach of the grasping appendage. The doctor picked it up and handed it to the man to whom it belonged. The burdensome weight of the golden onus was too much for the atrophied muscles of the dying man, so with his last strength he rested it on the precarious support of his well covered chest. "When I die..." came the last breath of the man, "you must make sure the kingship is passed on well. "Our goals for Scotland must be realized. So we appoint Banquo's heir as the new king, and he will rule well. Will you make sure that this is so for us?" He looked at the doctor, an unusual pleading in the hopeless eyes of one who has become used to ordering instead of asking. "I will my lord" came the reply. The doctor didn't have the heart to tell the dying king that Fleance, last of Banquo's line had died several days earlier, shortly after the castle was quarantined the words drifted through the air towards bed as Malcolm, king of Scotland joined Death on his distance less journey. The doctor clutched his head in his hands as he sat inside the defeated fortress. The king had been taken without an heir, the kingdom ruined. Nobles would fight for generations to gain the crown. A sudden impulse seized the fatigued man. Feeling Death's hand reaching towards him, inviting him to join the dark parade down the shadowed path, he grabbed one of the nearby torches. Frantically, he spread the fire. The table burned, the blankets, the bodies. Then, he threw the flaming torch out of the nearby slitted window. Below, bodies, hay, furniture, all joined him on his funeral pyre. And the light from the fiery fortress lit up the night like a small sun, illuminating all around it. A short distance from the castle, Lady Macbeth watched the fire rage with a tight lipped smile plastered on her grimy face. 


End file.
